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AMS Ads Learning

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#1 ·
***ALERT: long initial post***
+ NOTE: all kinds of interesting info in the pages below. Just a few guideposts:
-- My 2-month update: Message #73, bottom Page 3
-- Discussion about creating a Series ad (no can do!) starts on Page 4
-- Discussion about scaling up by increasing daily budget starts on Page 7
-- Discussion about running simultaneous ads and testing ad copy around Page 13
-- Discussion about running ads for non-first-in-series books starts bottom of Page 15
-- Discussion about Sequential ad copy testing (with my 7-day test results) starts on Page 16
-- Discussion about Previewing your ad starts on Page 18
-- Discussion: "What's an Impression?" starts on Page 18 -19
-- My 3rd Sequential ad copy testing report starts on Page 19, Message #460
-- Slowing of AMS effectiveness? Start reading Page 22-23
-- My 1-month update on latest ad copy change: Message #591, Page 24
-- AMS Account Mgr input starts at bottom of Page 25
-- Automatic vs. Manual Targeting discussion starts bottom of Page 27
-- My 99-day update on latest ad copy change: Message #1354, Page 55

* Introduction: As a relatively new indie-self-publishing author, I've learned a lot here in the Kboards Writer's Cafe while preparing my fiction writing debut, so I'd like to offer some thoughts about my recent (14 days in) experience with AMS ads. I was between books and decided to spend some marketing time on AMS. This thread can go on as long as needed, and I'll be adding updates when I can. Feel free to add your own ideas and answer questions raised (including mine) or pose new ones that relate to AMS Ad Learning.

* Where I'm coming from: I may be different from many reading this, so keep that in mind. I'm doing a novella series in Historical Fiction; early 17th century time period with New York City/Manhattan as the focus setting. Genre surely influences AMS ad performance so filter as needed. Two short books (novellas) are now out (both in KDP Select/KU); the third is releasing soon. I wanted to start AMS ads with the release of Book 2 ("1612") at its discounted price ($0.99 from $2.99) and carefully studied what I could and could not say about price in the ad, but Zon still rejected it. Rather than argue with them, I just re-submitted the ad without any price mentions and made sure the book detail page had all that verbiage. Then I quickly created and launched my AMS ad campaign for Book 1 ("1609"), which I'm keeping at a low $0.99 as a funnel into the series. Then I changed the copy of Book 2 and started a new campaign for that, eventually raising its price back to $2.99. Got it? :) I'll focus here on Book 1, which has a longer run (14+ days for this post) but throw in some info from Book 2 as well.

* My AMS Setup:
Type: Sponsored Product; avg Daily Budget: $1.00; Targeting: Manual

Here's what I've learned after 14 days...


ABOVE: January 16 - 10 days of Book 1

ABOVE: January 20 - 14 days of Book 1

* Dashboard Delays: My initial routine was to view and record the single-line campaign stats (charts above) to get familiar with the workings of the system: 11:00am, 5:00pm, and 11:00pm each day (have now backed off to twice a day). AMS says right on the Dashboard: "Campaign metrics may take up to 3 days to appear..." My delays seem to be around 2 days, primarily in the Sales column. Well, that kinda makes things hard to measure, especially if some things are updating while others are not within the same campaign. For example, I noticed I would sometimes see new Sales but NO new Clicks. Huh? Assuming that AMS is only tracking sales within the AMS ecosystem, which it states it is, this doesn't make sense UNLESS it's explained by different metrics (dashboard columns) lagging others within the same campaign. Then I also noticed sales showing on my campaign line but NOT showing in the Sales column in the Keyword tab page. Then 1-2 hours later, there they'd be! So all this tells me I can't rush this stuff; gotta play the long game.

* Keywords ("KWD"): An important subject for this AMS ad business. I started off with about 25 KWDs but soon ratcheted that up to 225. Some recommend filling all 1,000 available slots, but that seems unwieldy, especially when so many end up doing nothing. Of course, if I see new KWDs with potential, I'll add them.

The following is based on viewing the detailed "Keywords" tab in the campaign: (see chart below)

* CPC Bidding: Because I didn't know anything, and because Amazon's suggested bidding amount was $0.25, I just went with that. But over time and with learning, I began pulling many of those bids down lower and lower. Why? One reason was because I was hitting my $1 Daily Budget too early in the day (sometimes in a couple of hours), and I wanted to track full days. Also, most of the daily budget was being drained by Clicks that didn't go anywhere, i.e., no Sales. Moving forward with new campaigns, I might take the opposite approach: Start all at minimum bids ($0.02) and ratchet them UP over time.
NOTE: the "day" for AMS is supposed to be midnight YOUR local time, but I noticed that was usually later in the middle of my night. Then I received an email from Amazon stating that the "ad day" begins at 12:01 AM Pacific Standard Time (GMT-8), which is 3:00AM in the morning for me on New York time, so that explains that.

* Impressions: I don't really care about Impressions as long as I'm getting some, and they started immediately and usually increase by several thousands each day, with the exception noted below. It's easy to get loads of impressions by just adding big, generic keywords ("unlimited," "books," "Kindle") but that's a waste effort in my opinion. But there was one exception to this idea: the keyword "fiction," which Amazon suggested in its initial grouping. I was skeptical, and it only got 1,339 Impressions in 14 days (and three clicks), but I've already gotten one sale out of it. FYI: Just for the heck of it, I even threw in "Trump" as a Keyword along the way and within days, his Impressions were beating out many of my genre's author names. But with little relevance (although he is based in Manhattan, which is my primary setting, so there actually is some relevance, if far-fetched), the Clicks are still at 0 for Prez Trump, but with a $0.02 Bid, it's an inexpensive experiment.

One anomaly with Impressions in my 14 days was the six times that the Impressions DROPPED, usually at the end of the day, and mostly after the Daily Budget had been spent. How can this be? ***Anybody know??? UPDATE: Just re-checked and it was always after the Budget was spent. So I can see the algo freezing the Impressions but not taking them away. Still curious.

* Clicks: I check the Clicks column regularly, sorting from top to bottom, and make note of any new "top clicks" (3 or above) and adjust the CPC bid according to my bidding strategy below. FYI: it was 23 Clicks to the first Sale on both books, and both occurred on Day 3 of their respective campaigns. Interesting, eh? Wonder if that included a 2-day delay in Sales reporting?

* CTR (Click-Through Ratio: Clicks / Impressions): CTR isn't even on the AMS chart and doesn't interest me much, mainly because it doesn't take into account off-relevance KWDs or ad placement. Besides, it's easy enough to see at a glance by sorting the Imps column and looking at the Clicks next door.

* ACPC (Average Cost Per Click): Best viewed per KWD on the column breakout page. Doesn't mean much if you have only 1 click, but when click numbers (per KWD) go up, it's a helpful metric for adjusting the CPC Bid.

* Spend: Self-evident. Also sortable by clicking on the top of the column.

* Sales: An important column to sort to see how the metrics are relating. But there is that 1-2-3-day delay to deal with.

* ACoS (Average Cost of Sales): Very important, but even more important are the ACoS numbers PER KWD. Those are what I spent time looking at and how I came up with my personal Bidding Rules (see at bottom).


ABOVE (partial view): "1609" - Jan 16 - 10 days in

ABOVE (partial view): "1609" - Jan 20 - 14 days in

* ROI: The Return on Investment for the AMS ads is more complicated than it seems. For me, it's not an obvious: "So, did the ad campaign have an ACoS that's under the royalty rate of the book?" In theory, if you're over the ACoS, you're losing money. But that's just a surface view of the situation (to me). Why? Because there are follow-on benefits that enter the equation. Like:

1. KENP Reads in KU. Especially with a $0.99 book, this is a significant % of revenue. And my Reads of Book 1 definitely went up when AMS ads started running (see chart below). In fact, the Reads during the 14-day AMS period were more than 7 TIMES (754%) the Reads in the 14 days prior to the ad starting. Or, put another way, that's an *additional* 76% of the revenue from Reads *after* the AMS ad starting running.


ABOVE: a 754% increase in Reads after AMS ad started running.

2. Sales Rank bump from KU "borrows" (did you know that a borrow counts as a sale?). And there are probably some additional "organic" sales from a higher Sales Rank.

3. Undefined increase in "visibility" when ads are running, and especially when showing up on Page 1 of Sponsored Products as mine did early. Again, more visibility *could* result in more sales. Hasn't really worked out that way when I relaunched "1612" with a price increased to $2.99. (NOTE: "1612" is selling at the higher price, but just not through AMS)


ABOVE: Book 2 appears on Sponsored pages of Book 1

4. NOTE that I'm not doing Audiobooks or print books (yet), which would add to the complexity--and richness--of the ROI.

* KWD Types: For me (in my HF genre), besides the obvious content KWDs ("historical fiction"), the biggest Clickers and resulting Sales were the names of related authors. Not as much the book titles but the big or selling author names in my genre: James Michener, Ken Follett, et al. Which tells me that readers are searching for both Content and Author relevance (and Relevance is what the AMS ad system is mostly about).

My Current KWD Bid Strategy:
-- If a KWD's ACoS is under the book's royalty % *and selling*, I'll raise the bid slightly (1-3 cents) to see if I can pick up some more sales. If it's an author that seems a perfect fit and *should* be selling more, I'll go up a little more to give her more of a better shot.
-- If a KWD's ACoS is over the royalty % but under 100% (35% royalty) or 140% (70% royalty), I'll match the ACPC. Unless it's a category or an author who's perfect and then I'll increase the bid 1-3 cents more.
-- If a KWD's ACoS is over the 100% or 140% (only one instance so far), I'll start dropping the bid and watching closely.
-- I'll be updating these "rules" over time as I learn more. If anyone wants to submit their own formulas or rules about this, feel free to chime in.

THE BOTTOM LINE: With a current 84% overall ACoS on my $0.99 Book 1 of the novella series, I'm going to keep that AMS campaign running. However, I may tweak the copy, which means submitting a new ad and starting my tracking all over again. Book 2, with a current 237% campaign ACoS is not doing nearly as well (although still selling + KENP reading outside of AMS). I may pause it, or I may just let it run as the Spend is not costing me much. Maybe best to keep an eye on Book 2 while Book 3 in the series soon launches, then revisit.
3/18/17 UPDATE: Paused this campaign after 2 months and getting the overall ACoS down to 52.20%; rebooted campaign with different Bid strategy for a week, then rebooted that (for a blurb change); see more below.

How much trouble is all this? Not really that much. For me, while it did take time at the start to understand and set it all up, I found that tracking and tweaking things--especially keywords and bids--is no trouble at all; just a few minutes a day. And it's actually kinda fun! It's now just part of my daily routine: check the dashboard each day to see what's changed and make adjustments accordingly. Try it! You may just get hooked. And sell some books in the process.

I hope this is helpful to others thinking about AMS ads.

P.S. Feel free to contribute your own findings, thoughts, or questions about AMS ads.
 
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#2 ·
Harald said:
* KWD Types: For me (in my HF genre), besides the obvious content KWDs ("historical fiction" "new york"), the biggest Clickers and resulting Sales were the names of related authors. Not as much the book titles (exception: "Pillars of the Earth") but the big or selling author names in my genre: James Michener, Ken Follett, Louise Erdrich, et al. Which tells me that readers are searching for both Content and Author relevance (and Relevance is what the AMS ad system is mostly about).
My experience with this is similar. I note that by using an author name as a keyword an ad can appear on any of the author's books. That's handy and makes things easier. On the other hand, sometimes I see my own ads for an author keyword, sometimes I don't. Alternatively, when I target a specific book my ad seems to appear more regularly.

Perhaps when Amazon is deciding relevance/ad placement the more specific targeting gives an ad a higher relevance score?
 
#5 ·
Your observations on AMS ROI for KU books (my, doesn't that look like alphabet soup) is dead on. I have a huge negative ROI on my 99c first-in-series, but its ranking has gone up from the 125,000 level to the 12,500 level (approx.) since I started running the ad. Reads are up on it and the follow-on books. I've spent about $40 on the ad this month, made $283 on the book. AMS isn't the only factor, but I truly believe it helps.

On the other hand, the sponsored products list on my most successful book is now 93 pages across. Are all of those authors getting benefits from their ads?
 
#7 ·
First, thanks for sharing your experience(s).

Harald said:
* Impressions: I don't really care about Impressions as long as I'm getting some, and they started immediately and usually increase by several thousands each day, with the exception noted below.
I consider impressions a measurement of how much traffic a keyword is generating while my ad is running in it. However, when impressions suddenly decreased (or stopped), I initially considered it a sign that my daily limit was reached. After a while, I found this not to be the case. While it could mean the daily limit was reached, it can also mean that your ad isn't running in that keyword as often. Why? Not sure. I suspect there's an overriding algorithm at work, pulling ads on keywords where it detects under-performance. Just my theory.

-- If a KWD's ACoS is under the book's royalty % *and selling*, I'll raise the bid slightly (1-3 cents) to see if I can pick up some more sales. If it's an author that seems a perfect fit and *should* be selling more, I'll go up a little more to give her more of a better shot.
I have the same strategy. If I see a lot of impressions but no clicks, I'll even search on that keyword to see on what page my ad is running on. However, if impressions start a steep decline, it doesn't seem to matter how high I bid. The ad still doesn't run as often. More evidence that an overriding algorithm has already determined that my ad is under-performing and simply won't run as often as it did during the first few days. Makes me wonder if it's better to just end the campaign right then and set up a new one.
 
#9 ·
brkingsolver said:
Your observations on AMS ROI for KU books (my, doesn't that look like alphabet soup) is dead on. I have a huge negative ROI on my 99c first-in-series, but its ranking has gone up from the 125,000 level to the 12,500 level (approx.) since I started running the ad. Reads are up on it and the follow-on books. I've spent about $40 on the ad this month, made $283 on the book. AMS isn't the only factor, but I truly believe it helps.
Glad you're seeing positive results!

On the other hand, the sponsored products list on my most successful book is now 93 pages across. Are all of those authors getting benefits from their ads?
My two novellas are now showing 75 pages of Sponsored Products. The authors I'm using as keywords are at or over 100 pages. I would certainly be honored if Ken Follett were getting an ad benefit off of me, as I'm getting one off of him! :)
 
#11 ·
Accord64 said:
First, thanks for sharing your experience(s).
I consider impressions a measurement of how much traffic a keyword is generating while my ad is running in it. However, when impressions suddenly decreased (or stopped), I initially considered it a sign that my daily limit was reached. After a while, I found this not to be the case. While it could mean the daily limit was reached, it can also mean that your ad isn't running in that keyword as often. Why? Not sure. I suspect there's an overriding algorithm at work, pulling ads on keywords where it detects under-performance. Just my theory.
Could be (your drop in Impressions theory). I just went back over my tracking, and it looks like my Impressions only dropped after my Daily Budget was spent, although it didn't show up for a while. But within hours, the Impressions started gaining again.

I have the same strategy. If I see a lot of impressions but no clicks, I'll even search on that keyword to see on what page my ad is running on. However, if impressions start a steep decline, it doesn't seem to matter how high I bid. The ad still doesn't run as often. More evidence that an overriding algorithm has already determined that my ad is under-performing and simply won't run as often as it did during the first few days. Makes me wonder if it's better to just end the campaign right then and set up a new one.
I agree about the algo pushing under-performing kwds down and eventually out. The decision to end the campaign for me requires looking at all the kwds as a group and individually. And I can also pause any single keyword.
 
#12 ·
Jennifer Joy said:
My thoughts exactly! Thank you so much for posting this. It's a lot of information and I appreciate the breakdown.
You're welcome! And this might help, too: I have a document open where I track my daily AMS campaign results in an overview fashion. It's just a single that I update each day. Like this:
11:0AM: ___ Imps | ___ Clicks | $___ aCPC | $___ Spend | ___ Sales | ___% ACoS
(then I add little notes and observations under it; this gives me a quick way to capture ad history over time)
Feel free to steal it! :)
 
#14 ·
Gertie Kindle 'a/k/a Margaret Lake' said:
I have been grumbling about not being able to sort. Now I know I can. Thanks so much for that. Thanks so much for the whole post, actually. I learned a lot.
Yeah, it took me day or so to see the sorting (clicking the tops of the columns). Now I can't stop doing it!

Glad you're learning. That was my goal in posting this.
 
#15 ·
Good rules.

One thing I've learned is that once you start changing the bid rate for a keyword, the data for that keyword will be invalid and misleading.

For example, I had a high bid for "piano sheet music" (fifty cents?) and got a bunch of clicks but no purchases. So I decreased the bid to two cents.



So now, if I look at the data, it looks like the two-cent bid got a lot of impressions, but it did not. That's old data from before I decreased the bid. The other data for that keyword is also no longer relevant. Hope that's clear.
 
#16 ·
Harald said:
Yeah, it took me day or so to see the sorting (clicking the tops of the columns). Now I can't stop doing it!

Glad you're learning. That was my goal in posting this.
I just used the sort and it only took me a few minutes to see what's what and adjust my bids.

LilyBLily said:
How can you determine your ad has reached its daily spend limit?

Searching "baby boomer romance," which is a broad category that includes a lot of nonfiction, the first sponsored title is about a 17-year-old babysitter, and the second and third are billionaire romances. By the last couple of pages, there are no sponsored ads at all. And there is no moving band of sponsored ads below. My ads are not there, although they should be, so I'm wondering if I've reached my daily spend limit on them
It will say so on the left aide of the campaign.

TromboneAl said:
Good rules.

One thing I've learned is that once you start changing the bid rate for a keyword, the data for that keyword will be invalid and misleading.

For example, I had a high bid for "piano sheet music" (fifty cents?) and got a bunch of clicks but no purchases. So I decreased the bid to two cents.

So now, if I look at the data, it looks like the two-cent bid got a lot of impressions, but it did not. That's old data from before I decreased the bid. The other data for that keyword is also no longer relevant. Hope that's clear.
How much did I spend? How much did I make? That's the most important data.
 
#17 ·
LilyBLily said:
How can you determine your ad has reached its daily spend limit?
It will say it at far left on your main campaign screen (the one that's titled "Advertising Campaigns"). The column is titled "Status." The normal is "Running" and if you're over your budget, it will say "Daily Budget Spent" (or something similar). It will be obvious. If it says "Running," then you have not reached the daily limit.

Searching "baby boomer romance," which is a broad category that includes a lot of nonfiction, the first sponsored title is about a 17-year-old babysitter, and the second and third are billionaire romances. By the last couple of pages, there are no sponsored ads at all. And there is no moving band of sponsored ads below. My ads are not there, although they should be, so I'm wondering if I've reached my daily spend limit on them.
I just typed in "Amazon Books: Baby Boomer Romance" in Google and got "Stormy" by Tina Gayle as result number 1. And the Sponsored Product "band" has 132 pages (with my browser window small; the size of your browser window determines the number of pages). Reaching your Daily Budget could be one reason you're not showing up in competitive books. But I also see that for me -- I'm on some books by a certain keyworded author but not others. Not exactly sure why that is (beyond keyword relevance).
 
#18 ·
TromboneAl said:
Good rules.
Thanks!

One thing I've learned is that once you start changing the bid rate for a keyword, the data for that keyword will be invalid and misleading. For example, I had a high bid for "piano sheet music" (fifty cents?) and got a bunch of clicks but no purchases. So I decreased the bid to two cents.
So now, if I look at the data, it looks like the two-cent bid got a lot of impressions, but it did not. That's old data from before I decreased the bid. The other data for that keyword is also no longer relevant. Hope that's clear.
Correct; it's now "rolling data." And one reason I keep a running document to help with the overall history . Like this:
January 21, 2017:
√ 11:00AM: 93,644 Imps | 150 Clcks +5 | $0.09 aCPC | $13.96 Spnd | 16 Sale | 87.96% ACoS
√ 11:00PM: 96,070 Imps | 157 Clcks +7 | $0.09 aCPC | $14.54 Spnd | 17 Sale | 86.24% ACoS

That, of course, doesn't help with each kwd row -- that would require more than I'm willing do -- but I do add important notes under my tracking lines. Like this:
January 20, 2017: (*** DAY 14 ***)
√ 11:00AM: 89,034 Imps | 142 Clcks | $0.09 aCPC | $13.26 Spnd | 16 Sale +1 | 83.55% ACoS
NOTE New Click on "xxxxxxxxx" = 5.88% ACoS ($0.25 bid; $0.06 CPC), so reduce bid to $0.15 to match "yyyyyyyy".

Not a perfect system of tracking but better than nothing.
 
#19 ·
LilyBLily said:
None of my ads say "Daily Budget Spent." Never have.

I've done the same Google search on Baby Boomer Romance and come up with the same title, Stormy, which is 694,000 and change in the Amazon store and which does NOT look like it's about baby boomers. (Bare male torso.) I got to page 73 of the sponsored 111 pages of ads--most of which are also bare male torsos--before my crap internet decided to stop building pages. So I still have no idea if my sponsored ads with those keywords are in there. But it hardly matters since mine are not bare male torso books.

I tried the same category term, "baby boomer romance," in the Books store instead of the Kindle store as I had done previously. Again, no sponsored ads. So this means if a reader is already on the Amazon site and puts in a category, the ads may not be there. Then again, they can be. I checked a couple of keywords for another of my titles and mine was on page one--but it's a nonfiction, niche category. Romance is super competitive now. It does seem that Amazon sometimes shows ads and sometimes does not--even though we are waving ad dollars and saying "Pick me!"
I had the same problem since my romances are "sweet." Although my cover stood out from the manly chests, it is obviously not in the same ballpark.
 
#20 ·
LilyBLily said:
None of my ads say "Daily Budget Spent." Never have.
This is what it looks like when you hit your daily limit:


... I tried the same category term, "baby boomer romance," in the Books store instead of the Kindle store as I had done previously. Again, no sponsored ads. So this means if a reader is already on the Amazon site and puts in a category, the ads may not be there. Then again, they can be. I checked a couple of keywords for another of my titles and mine was on page one--but it's a nonfiction, niche category. Romance is super competitive now. It does seem that Amazon sometimes shows ads and sometimes does not--even though we are waving ad dollars and saying "Pick me!"
I don't know your books, so hard to evaluate, and not sure what you mean by "Again, no sponsored ads." My search in Books: "baby boomer romance" comes up with Secret: Bluegrass Homecoming, Book 2 as the #1 result. THAT does look like Baby Boomer Romance (and no bare male torsos :), and it has well over 100 Sponsored Products pages. Are you in there? Is that author/title in your keywords? Just curious.
 
#21 ·
LilyBLily said:
I found the same page, but no ads, even though I disabled Adblock Plus and refreshed. But regardless, sometimes the sponsored ads are running down below like a banner, and sometimes they're just the last two or three books on the page, indistinguishable to the casual shopper from whatever other titles came up in that category. Obviously, that's the better place to be.
Not exactly sure what you mean by "...sponsored ads... sometimes they're just the last two or three books on the page." On my desktop view of that "Secrets: Bluegrass..." book's (and most other books) product detail page, I see, in order going down: Also Bought panel, Sponsored Products panel, Editorial Reviews, Product Details, About the Author, Customer Reviews, What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item, Your Recently Viewed Items... panel (and then the Product Display ad on the right). ***Are you seeing something else? Can you identify more? AFAIK, Sponsored Product ads only appear in that panel dedicated to them (on the product detail page).
 
#22 ·
Harald said:
THE BOTTOM LINE: With a current 84% overall ACoS on my $0.99 Book 1 of the novella series, I'm going to keep that AMS campaign running.
Greetings Harald,

So if I understand this correctly, the 84% ACoS represents an ad spend of $13.33 and an estimated total sales of $15.87. And this doesn't represent the royalty, which is 35% of $15.87, or $5.55 (your actual income from the book sales).

Are you banking on KU reads to make up for the balance of $7.78 ($13.33 - $5.55?) Otherwise wouldn't you be losing money (spending more than you make)?

Thanks for this very illuminating post.
 
#24 ·
LilyBLily said:
An ACoS of 70% on a book for sale within Amazon's 70% royalty program is breaking even. If you have a nice little graph of what your KU sales looked like before you started AMS ads, you can compare it to what they're like after the ads have been going for a while. Then you can get a very approximate (unless you're a math nerd) idea of whether the increased KU reads are giving you a net profit.
But if you're not in KU, there's no point in going over the 70% or 35% mark. Is that correct thinking?
 
#25 ·
LFGabel said:
So if I understand this correctly, the 84% ACoS represents an ad spend of $13.33 and an estimated total sales of $15.87. And this doesn't represent the royalty, which is 35% of $15.87, or $5.55 (your actual income from the book sales).
Are you banking on KU reads to make up for the balance of $7.78 ($13.33 - $5.55?) Otherwise wouldn't you be losing money (spending more than you make)?
Thanks for this very illuminating post.
Good question, LFGabel. And the answer (today) is: Yes, I am *easily* making up the balance of Campaign-Spend-to-Sales loss in KU Reads. Looking at my tracking notes (and my KDP dashboard) shows me the jump in Reads after starting the ads, and it is significant. So that in itself makes the campaign (for Book 1 - $0.99) running in the black. Then the other benefits I mention above (e.g., the organic sales from the bumps in Sales Rank) are on top of that. So yeah, it's worth the ad cost for this book. At least for now. [Note that I'm using a Per-Page Read Payout of $0.005 (US store) in my internal calculations. Last month's December figure was actually a bit higher at .00523954.]

But if you're not in KU, there's no point in going over the 70% or 35% mark. Is that correct thinking?
Not necessarily; there can be other tactical benefits. For me and for a Book 1 of a series, I would be willing to skate close to the edge of breakeven or even lose money if it helps follow-on sales to the other books. Remember... THE FUNNEL! :D
 
#26 ·
LilyBLily said:
An ACoS of 70% on a book for sale within Amazon's 70% royalty program is breaking even. If you have a nice little graph of what your KU sales looked like before you started AMS ads, you can compare it to what they're like after the ads have been going for a while. Then you can get a very approximate (unless you're a math nerd) idea of whether the increased KU reads are giving you a net profit. ...
Yep. And see more in my response to LFGabel above. (sorry, I missed this before I answered him)
 
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